Incidentally, the British Library has a fantastic exhibition on at the moment called Evolving English, which is well worth a look. Also of interest is the Sir John Ritblat gallery, which, among other curiosities, has a display of Alice in Wonderland books from the past century and a half, Jane Austen's writing desk, and a separate Magna Carta room. Most thrillingly of all, however, were the collection of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century play manuscripts, positioned right at the entrance. My favourite was a copy of Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess, opened to the title page.
Anyway. Since my meeting has been rescheduled for next week, this has meant that for the first time since mid-January I have a stretch of time where I don't have a pressing deadline to produce words. Consequently I have been quite bad over the past few days and have thrown myself into non-research books, and so from now until Wednesday I'm going to concern myself with primary material. I began this morning by rereading The Dragon of Wantley (1737) by Henry Carey, a funny little burlesque play that I'm inordinately fond of. The story is fairly simple. It's based on a seventeenth-century comic ballad which reads like a ruder Lewis Carroll poem and tells of a dragon attacking the village of Wantley, to the villagers' dismay. They plea to the bibulous local nobleman, Moore of Moore Hall, to defend them and he eventually agrees - on the condition that the beautiful Margery agrees to dress him and kiss him the morning before he goes into battle. She agrees and they prepare him, dressing him in a suit of spiked armour. They engage in some mild flirting, although it's unclear how knowing or innocent it is:
MARGERY: Put your Hand here, and feel my Heart how't thumps.
MOORE: Good lack a day! how great a Palpitation! (II:I, 11-12)
(Consider what it is exactly that Moore is feeling.) Moore then sets off and arrives at the dragon's den. He hides in a well and when the dragon comes to drink from it, he leaps out and kicks it in the backside. The dragon then, in the words of the ballad, "groan'd, kick'd, sh-t, and died", while Moore emerges victorious to marry Margery. Incidentally, the ballad indicates, rather wryly, that this is an example of cunning defeating strength, while the play does no such thing.
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| Woodcutting of Moore kicking the dragon in the backside. Note the spikes on Moore's armour. |
The love story between Moore and Margery is of Carey's own invention (along with a second female character who creates a love triangle), although otherwise the play follows the ballad's story fairly exactly. Incidentally, the play did very well and the first run outperformed even that of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. To me, the appeal comes from two places. First of all, I just like the story: it's a quaint, exaggerated version of typical English ballads. It reminds me of the sort of folk stories Katherine Briggs has discussed in her unsurpassable books on the subject.
That on its own wouldn't make it particularly special, however, which brings me to my second point. The play is one of those that becomes more interesting the more you find out about its production. Carey used the ballad as a source, but his focus was actually on parodying a failed Handel opera, Giustino, of a few months previously; consequently much of the play is performed as opera which music in an exaggeratedly Italian style to contrast with the rural English setting. I haven't seen a contemporary picture of either performance, although literature seems to indicate that the dragon costume in Wantley parodied the ridiculous monster costume of Giustino.
Satirising an opera requires able singers. Thomas Reinhold, a bass singer, was cast as the dragon while Thomas Salway played Moore dressed as and mimicking the voice of Farinelli, the famous castrato. In other words, the villain of the piece sounded strong and macho to emphasise the voice of the high and girlish voice of the hero - a decision that is absolutely inspired and designed to counter all presuppositions about heroic behaviour. To be blunt, which one has balls? Moore also goes into battle without a weapon, preferring to drink "six Quarts of Ale, and one of Aqua Vitae" (II:I, 81) to steady his nerve. Contrast this with the ridiculously long sword of Tom Thumb in the portrait of Miss Rose (shown on this post), a woman playing the part of a hero. I don't entirely agree with phallic interpretations of heroic weaponry in "straight" drama, largely because the primary purpose of weapon design has always been practicality in combat, but I think that they certainly have merit when discussing parody.
On the subject of heroes and weaponry, what has always interested me is the seemingly-inexplicable detail of Moore's spiked armour. It was only a few months ago when I read Aphra Behn's The Rover that I came across the following stage direction, and with it a possible explanation for the spiked armour:
Advances, from the father end of the scenes, two men dressed all over with horns [the sign of the cuckold] of several sorts, making grimaces at one another, with papers pinned on their backs. (I:II)
So (if we're taking Behn as a precedent), the spikes on Moore's armour could represent cuckoldry. This may not necessarily be correct, but within the context of the play I think that it's a valid explanation.
This post is long enough already so I will end it here, although the play certainly bears much further discussion. I hesitate to blindly recommend reading it because my love for it is based on several unrelated aspects that appeal to me - and honestly, it simply doesn't make for as pleasurable reading as many other eighteenth-century plays because so much is reliant on visual humour. Still, I think it's an interesting play, and one of the more important ones of its contemporaries. I'm very glad to know of it.
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